The Romance of Zion Chapel Part 16

These thoughts brought deep sorrow to him for many days, during which once more he rebuked himself as "a base person," but, curiously enough, in one who so despised the world and its opinion, it was an apparently superficial consideration that was the mainstay of his faithfulness, against these disloyal suggestions of a life that was thus reawakening in spite of himself.

There were moments when he could conceive his going to Isabel, and asking her to share his life with him; but never could he endure the thought of her bearing that name which seemed so inviolably Jenny's.

Even though Jenny had come to him in a dream and asked him to give her name to Isabel, there was still the world. Though Jenny might understand, the world would think he had forgotten Jenny. The minority of faithful hearts would grow sadder by his seeming apostasy, and the cynic would strengthen his pessimism by one more ill.u.s.tration of human inconstancy. The world might hear that he was loving Isabel in some Aegean isle, and still deem him faithful; for grief is allowed mistresses, but with a wife it is understood to die.

No! so long as the world lasted no other woman should steal her name from Jenny's grave.

And this was an una.s.sailable symbol. Here the vital principle of his faithfulness was entrenched as in an impregnable fortress. He would see Isabel's heart break ere she should bear Jenny's name.

Yet while he made the vow, his love for Isabel was musical as spring within his soul, and he dared to tell himself that in G.o.d's sight he was still Isabel's as well as Jenny's.

Thus it came about that one autumn day, when Isabel's letters had lain unopened through spring and summer, in one sudden impulse of mere desire he had opened and read them,--not as Jenny's letters, but as messages for which he himself was hungering. He had released the incense, and as he kissed the dear writing, he momentarily forgot that it was written to Jenny, and only remembered that it had come from Isabel. In the snare of the incense he even accused himself for having left them unread so long, and then to think that nearly six months had gone by since the second letter had brought its half-playful reproach for forgetfulness.... "Ah! Jenny, I'm afraid you're a fickle little person, after all."

How strange it seemed to hear Jenny talked to like that--now.... Yes, of course, Jenny was dead. Jenny was dead ... and Isabel was calling.

Was Jenny losing her power in this intoxicating fragrance of Isabel's words--as though for once the cross should lose its virtue in some subtle air of h.e.l.lish sweetness?

O lilies from Jenny's white coffin, O little chrysanthemum that lay in her bosom, O violets from Jenny's tomb, pierce with your faithful breath this cloud of incense that is enwrapping Jenny's lover.

Alas! the power of the dead is but the power of the ideal, at once the strongest and the weakest force in the world,--a power, indeed, that prevails, but which may in some moments be shattered by the frailest whisper of the real.

Isabel was calling, and Theophil was mad to go. Come back he might, but go he must, he would. Yes! he was going.

There was only one possible way of spending that fevered night--in the train; and it was in the train, speeding on to London and to Isabel, his heart on fire, his eager eyes wasting themselves on the flying darkness, that Theophil spent it. Purposes he had none, only a desire,--just to see Isabel again. That immediate future was too effulgent for him to think of anything beyond it.

He would see Isabel again!

From a distant starry name, withdrawn into the abysses of heaven, she would turn again to woman and a wonderful nearness.

The thought of being once again in a little room together enveloped him in a cloud of sweetness, as though the train were pa.s.sing through hidden orchards.

Isabel! Isabel! don't you hear love's wings beating towards you across the night? Have you not just awakened suddenly from your first sleep in the rosebush where you lie, and said: "Surely out there across the silent woods and meadows, where the night swallows London like a camp-fire, a train, a moving street of lighted windows, is speeding through the darkness and the dew, and in one of those little travelling rooms sits Theophil with his eyes fixed on me"?

Was it Jenny's name that Theophil was thus taking to Isabel?

No, not Jenny's name. Never Jenny's name!

He was going to look on Isabel again--that was all. Perhaps he would die with the mere joy of seeing her again--and then he would not need to think of the future. Yes! the deeps of his soul had wanted her as much as that.

It was about half-past six as he reached London; and though it was impossible to call on her for some hours yet, Theophil drove straight to Isabel's little square, shuttered and still in the early-risen London morning. His eyes chose the second storey for hers, and picked out two dainty windows as her rooms. He half expected to see the blind suddenly drawn aside and her face, a sleepy flower, bloom through the curtains.

He lingered awhile, loving each individual brick of the house with his eyes, and then, kissing his hands to the sleeping windows, he rejoined his cab, which he had left at the street corner, shy of awaking the hushed square with its clatter.

He gave Isabel till ten o'clock, which was perhaps hardly enough for a young London lady's toilette and breakfast, and then called. A pleasant housemaid answered the bell, and told him that Miss Strange was away, and was not expected till to-morrow.

Here was a surprise. He had never even thought of that possibility.

Begging leave to write Miss Strange a note, he presently found himself in Isabel's room. It was the same his eyes had blessed from the street.

So this was Isabel's room! So evidently hers, her very self!

Isabel pictures, Isabel wall-paper, Isabel chairs, Isabel cushions, Isabel desk, Isabel books, Isabel bibelots, Isabel litter,--all Isabel.

And there hung an arras portiere over a doorway to the right of the fireplace. That was her bedroom! Dare he peep in? That was her little bed. Would the housemaid catch him if he slipped in and left a kiss on her pillow? By the mirror was a grotesque little china monster with his mouth full of hat-pins. He stole one for a memory. Over a chair lay a little dressing-jacket. He took it up and kissed it.

Then he sat down to write to her. What a tidy, methodical little desk!

Everything in its place. Dear, business-like, sea-witch Isabel! Here was her engagement book. He mustn't begin reading her letters!

After his first disappointment, he was half-glad he would have to wait till to-morrow to see her,--for, of course, he would wait. To have thus sat in her room was almost enough for a first meeting. It was like stealing upon her while she slept.

Then he began a letter; but as he wrote, who was this suddenly standing at his side? Was it Isabel? No...it was a little sobbing body quite near to his, crying as if its heart would break...

Oh, Jenny, Jenny--G.o.d forgive me!

The spell was broken, the fit was over. Theophil left no letter for Isabel, and no message, and the same evening he was once more back in his little study in Zion Place, wild with remorse. O for the scourge and the fire! But what penance shall avail to ease that poor little creature's broken-hearted crying?

"She seems to have had a shock!--She seems to have had a shock!"

CHAPTER XXVIII

BACK IN ZION PLACE

The shame of that wild unfaithfulness burned in Theophil's soul for many days. It humiliated him like a physical degradation. To have been so drunkenly untrue! It was one of those shocks to the moral nature from which it never quite recovers, and Theophil's face lost some of its steadfastness, his walk some of its firmness, for this perfidy towards Jenny.

There was only one way to make the sense of it endurable, and he threw himself into his work with a wasting vehemence. Where was his ambition?

There was so much yet to do. New Zion had long since moved and hummed, and whizzed, the neighbouring towns had in a measure begun to dance to his piping, but it must be a long while yet ere his name was to London and to the world what it was already to Coalchester,--that mere microcosm of his fame.

And till London knew him as well as Coalchester, there was no real monument to Jenny. London--no longer the city of Isabel--must learn to say "Theophilus Londonderry" so naturally, that it would some day serve as an unforgettable remembrance of Jenny. He must become a great man, because a great name is the one shrine in which love's memory may escape oblivion. In the arms of his name Jenny would then be carried down the years, one woman-star saved from the night of death. Again, the world, for which in one way he had so little care, was to help him indirectly to keep his troth to Jenny.

In a sense, the mountain was already coming to this young prophet; for with the winter some of London's finest spirits were now and again to be met in that incongruous Zion Place, as visiting lecturers to New Zion.

And each one, as he came, was impressed as Isabel had been on that old evening when she had discovered her colony of surprise-people. Each realised in that gravely masterful young minister a power and a force of attraction which could not long remain hidden in that little country town. Meanwhile, their visits enabled him to test his own calibre by comparison with theirs, and to realise that his instincts had not befooled him, but that he too had been called to the stage of the great world.

It was in the operation of this method of inviting the mountain that the French poet, with a reference to whom we began this history, made his fantastic appearance in Zion Place. It is to be feared that it was a conscious love of paradox that prompted an invitation from which indeed New Zion must derive the most mystical of benefits and the most imaginary of delights; but it was Theophil's whim to crown the Renaissance in Coalchester by this _reductio ad absurdum._ The subtlest poetic art of France should come in person to Coalchester, and after days should tell that Theophilus Londonderry, while still a young country minister, had bidden Paris sing her loveliest siren-song in the musty little lecture-hall of New Zion. It is thus power bends the bow of the world till the ends meet, and shoots the arrow of his name among the stars.

With the reawakening of his ambition, Theophil began to realise that his work at New Zion was nearing its end, and that before long he must seek that larger stage. Yet all his heart remained in that dull little Zion Place, and while Jenny's old mother lived he could not conceive tearing himself away. Could he indeed even bring himself to say good-bye to these mean little romantic streets along which Jenny had tripped? Could he bear to think of the commonplace little house which Jenny had transfigured to a shrine being desecrated with vulgar occupation? If he could only raze it to the ground, as a cup from which a queen has drunk is shattered lest it should be soiled with usage of common lips! Some day he might have grown rich enough to buy it, and set it apart for ever, as a little house sacred to love and youth; but, meanwhile, with what ugly and noisome presences would it have been defiled!

He would stand in Jenny's room with its quiet books and flowers, and his heart would ache to think that some day harsh hands must noisily break in upon that sacred silence, and strip it of all its delicate memories.

Jenny's room the lair of wild beasts, a nest of foulness and serpents!

Sometimes he was thus haunted with the ghosts of those who were to riot up and down these stairs when Jenny's memory had quite died out of these walls like a fragrance of musk overborne with coa.r.s.e odours.

Yes! in this perhaps are the rich most enviable of the poor, that they can afford chapels for their memories, and their houses, thus saved from external taint from generation to generation, become temples of which the very walls breathe n.o.bleness, whereas the very birthplace of genius itself becomes a butcher's shop; and though that genius be Shakespeare, and the old house be some day purified seventy times seven, and garnished as you please, the smell of slaughtered beasts will still cling about its rooms, and the butcher insist upon immortality too.

Jenny's old mother was soon to turn into a memory also. She had from time to time declared that she would not see another May, and had indeed on one occasion named the day on which she would die, with a curious precision, as though she had seen it written somewhere in a book, or learnt it from private or unimpeachable information. Latterly she had met Jenny twice in full daylight on the stairs, and it was evident that the old woman would soon complete that little family circle in Paradise.

But she still kept about, and whereas her old husband had grown sleepier as his end neared, she seemed to be growing more active again, fidgety and restless. She slept badly, and returned to her old habit of being first down in the morning and lighting the kitchen fire, in spite of remonstrances. Indeed, she might sometimes be heard up in the middle of the night, making herself a cup of tea in the kitchen. The kitchen had been her world, and she was already beginning to haunt it.